Braxton Taylor
When I was first starting out deer hunting, signature hats were all of the rage. I don’t mean like the flat-brim craze that you see in the western hunting crowd these days. I mean goofy styles that could set you apart from your bow-toting brethren.
This has a lot to do with Chuck Adams. If you’re too young to know who he is, just think about your favorite hunting influencers and then imagine someone who probably has 1,000 times their bowhunting skill. Adams is known not only for killing huge animals all over North America, but also for wearing a green stocking cap that’s usually seated a little crooked on his head.
Wearing a funny hat or your grandfather’s old blood-crusted camo jacket isn’t the only way of standing out and sticking to your superstitions. Some hunters go the facepaint route, where they look more like they’re tailgating for an NFL game than heading to a treestand.
While some of these choices are definitely tied to presenting an image, some are just about luck. A lucky hat can go a long way in our minds for some reason, and if it gives us a sense that the fates will look upon us favorably, maybe we will hunt harder.
Maybe just a belief in the superstitious can help you fill a tag. Or maybe this is just the hunter version of adjusting your chakra via crystals.
A History Of Quirky Hunters
We’ve only been able to go to the grocery store to fill our houses with calories for a blink of time in the grand scheme of things. Mostly, we’ve had to go find or kill our next meal. We know this, so it’s no surprise when you hear about the rituals of folks in the past or people living today who rely on a direct line to the land for their sustenance.
In Mongolia, the Kazakh people use golden eagles to hunt. They perform rituals that involve chanting, sacrifices, and the sharing of a meal with their feathered hunting partners. The Bantu in Africa offer their deceased ancestors’ spirits drinks, tobacco, and food. They also pray and sing for them in order to maintain the connection between the members of their bloodlines who have returned back to the earth.
Offerings of all types occur in hunting cultures in Europe, Japan, and other locations. The general thought behind these is that the act of hunting is important, and for it to break our way, we must give the ethereal governing bodies a bit of a gift. Some folks still stuff a bit of greenery in a deer’s mouth just so its spirit has some extra nourishment to help it through the journey to the big bedding ground in the sky.
Most modern whitetail hunters don’t go too deep into rituals, sacrifices, and traditions, but they can be superstitious. I know I am.
Good Arrows, Bad Arrows
When I start hunting, I use the first arrow in my quiver on the first hunt. If I see deer, I keep using that arrow until I blank. Then it’s time for the second arrow in my quiver. I don’t know how this started for me, but I almost can’t stand it if I try to do it any other way. Maybe there’s something else there, perhaps a tiny dose of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I don’t know.
I do know that I feel a bit more hopeful, and a bit more optimistic when I move to the next arrow in my quiver. I know it doesn’t matter, but it feels like I’ve put away a bad luck arrow, and might be working with something that’ll bring good luck.
I never said superstitions made sense or were grounded in reality. Some people have to have a Twinkie with them on rifle opener. Others I’ve heard about will leave their broadhead at the sight of a kill. Others carry a specific rifle round in their hand or their interior pocket before they load up when they get to stand.
Some folks think seeing a certain critter is good luck. My dad always felt that way about when the chickadees come through. Maybe he’s right, maybe chickadees are a good sign. Or maybe when they come through, it’s because the same conditions that make them hungry make the deer hungry, too.
I don’t know. It’s probably total bullshit, but to this day, when I hear the call of a chickadee, or I see one hopping along an oak limb near my stand, something changes just a bit inside of me. There’s just a slight undercurrent that starts humming in my chest, and while the bucks don’t always follow the songbirds, I secretly always believe they will—and that’s all that really matters.
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